I was just reminded of the 'Radical Fishing' incident, where developer Gamenauts took the game mechanics, objectives, creatures and power-ups from the Vlambeer game 'Radical Fishing', changed the graphics and changed 'shooting the fish' to 'slicing the fish' and released their resulting game Ninja Fishing for iOS to great commercial success (while Vlambeer's Radical Fishing remains relatively obscure).

I was also pointed to a game called 'Crush the Castle' today (see screenshot), a physics-based game where you use a trebuchet to launch balls against a structure consisting of rectangles and triangles to make them collapse, and you try to kill the people inside those structures. Sound familiar? It was released half a year before Angry Birds.

Some say it's blatant plagiarism and it should be acted against. But should action really be taken against developers drawing inspiration from other sources? The above two examples are pretty blatant, but the line becomes vaguer in other examples. Is Minecraft an Infiniminer rip-off? Is Terraria a Minecraft rip-off? Is Sonic a Mario rip-off?

It's pretty clear that taking at least some elements has been inevitable in the evolution of video games (neither Angry Birds nor Crush the Castle would've existed without 1976's 'Artillery', Without Nintendo's 'Donkey Kong', there would be no 'Pitfall!', and without 'Pitfall!', Nintendo wouldn't have made 'Super Mario Bros.' as it is. And without 'Super Mario Bros.', there would be no 'Sonic the Hedgehog'. It's not just the platform genre, every video game genre is built on stealing elements from previous games.

What does /bun/ think about inspiration/plagiarism in video games? How 'original' must a game be? How much can it 'steal'? Where does /bun/ draw the line between 'original game' and 'rip-off'?

It's okay for a game to take elements from other games as long as they have enough other original ideas to stand on its own legs. Or it could just take a bunch of pre-established ideas and mix them together in a new and interesting way. The absence of these two things is why I find the FPSs of the last decade to mostly be a waste of time.Okami is a lot like Zelda, but it has the unique brush mechanic making it not as much of a ripoff as Darksiders. It usually boils down to pic related though.Stuff like Ultimate iZelda Climb is, of course, completely unacceptable.

NightSky was supposed to be done in 2009 (or maybe 2008 even), though (I remember reading about it as far back as 2008 for sure). I don't feel like going into the whole thing deeper as I only spent 10-15 minutes researching the whole thing but again, from the looks of it LIMBO is the rip off here, even though it was released earlier.

My high school literature teacher loved to quote "there is no word under the blue sky that was not spoken previously"************I believe that until a new area is found, all games will somewhat "remind" their predecessors. So, in the end, what makes a game better than the rest is how they use the present technology (by that, I mean like physics engine and/or games that can be "ripped off"/"influenced") to apply the idea.************Luckily for me, I choose games based on their promise of a story/plot rather than mechanics. And, to this day, I can still play games with "shitty graphics" To exemplify; I played quite a lot adventure games in olden times. Overall, they did not diverged much. But I enjoyed Syberia on a different level than your average adventure game as Sokal told me a beautiful story . And I also still love playing AGS games. Someone can easily claim that they are "derivative of <insert a game here>" But that does not matter in my gaming experience. This can be applied to your generic shooter/FPS or any other genre.************I get goosebumps whenever I hear the word "innovative" but that is how things roll in today's world. They (some argue - lol) say "be the first and be the best" It is not just if you have the idea/technology but how you present (showing off is better suited word, right?), as in the case of angry birds. When I saw the hype around angry birds, I remembered crush the castle as well as some other flash games in the same subgenre. But angry birds had somewhat better appeal, which won it that particular place. Yes, it is a derivative, but as the saying goes "the horns outgrew the ear" ************We all know that companies are making games for profit, and for that appeal to wider audience is essential. There is a proven path in the industry and not much deviance would be seen, be it a TV series or a game or your average product. We do not like "new" that much, we, as species, like to take the same road, the road that proven itself safe. So plagiarism is inevitable in the end. Another result is that games are turning to more "casual" style, another point of debate, not suited here. There are of course ones that are willing to take "the path less travelled" And there are people after something "refreshing". We call them indie. Then they "come to light" and then cooked for genpops taste. Then a new genre emerges. Until that time, everyting will be "homage" or "derivation".************So, overall, newcomers up the limit. But you can still see people playing diablo or half-life. It is what classics are, they stand tall against the test of time. This can be better observed in the area of literature, as the human, the very topic do not change that much. ************I am sorry, as I have trouble concentrating at this late hour, I wished I had written more linear and easy to follow, start should serve as to see the text as random rambling.As compliance with the usual wall of text end message; IMHO, penny for my thoughts, my few cents, etc, etc...

>>24085LIMBO has had its art style since at least 2006 (that's when they first released footage of it,) NightSky wasn't even announced until 2007. If one ripped off the other it wasn't LIMBO.I mean, I assume you're talking about the art style, cause that's the only thing they really have in common from what I can tell.

As a side note, there's also A Crow In Hell (2008) which also shares that sort of style.

I didn't even consider the art style. I meant the puzzles. I played NightSky before LIMBO and at times 'wow, it's like I'm really playinjg NightSky!' is exactly what I thought, as the solutions (especially to the gravity puzzles) were exactly the same.

>>24238My bad then. Either way my point still stands though, LIMBO's development started in 2004 and NightSky's in 2007. Also, if your issues is with puzzles and their solutions wouldn't they have had to, you know, play it? Unless they showed off the puzzles and their solutions in trailers or something.

>Unless they showed off the puzzles and their solutions in trailers or something.

That's what I assumed.

Then again if they came up with it on their own it wouldn't be that surprising, it happened multiple times throughout history of mankind (we even have a saying ver here that goes 'the need is the mature of inventions but sometimes there are multiple fathers').